Peck’s Dress Shop checks out

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For decades, Peck’s Dress Shop was the place women turned to when they needed a classic Pendleton suit or a swanky designer evening gown. The selection and quality of the store’s apparel and the fashion sense of the boutique’s 20 seasoned employees are unparalleled in the region, regular customers say.

But after 39 years, the Swatara Township store is going out of business.

Longtime storeowner Sandy Shuey decided to close after Vera Bradley, a national manufacturer and distributor of handbags, told Shuey in August to stop selling its products online. Shuey was told Fort Wayne, Ind.-based Vera Bradley intended to start its own retail operations.

Vera Bradley representatives declined to comment.

The designer handbags had become a major part of Peck’s business. The purses generated about half of the store’s $2 million in sales in 2005. Without the e-commerce revenue, Shuey cannot afford to run her business.

Closing the store has been an emotional experience for customers and employees. As Shuey presided over Peck’s going-out-of-business sale last week, some of her regular customers cried as they hugged and told her goodbye.

“This has truly been a family store. And I don’t mean just the Peck family,” Shuey said.

Shuey’s mother, Esther Peck, started the dress shop in 1966, when she installed a rack of clothing at her beauty salon inside the family’s home. Peck was fashionable, creative and not afraid to state her opinion. She gave her customers an honest assessment of their attire, Shuey said.

As more of her salon customers turned to Peck for their special occasions or work attire, the business grew. Shuey’s father, Glenn Peck, kept adding to the family home to keep up with the business’ growth.

Today, the building is a quirky mishmash of rooms and a downstairs apartment that Esther Peck occupied until she died in April at age 87. The store is in a modest residential neighborhood in the Oberlin section of Dauphin County.

Shuey joined her mother in 1975 to take care of the business’ finances.

As the 67-year-old Shuey toured the store’s many rooms filled with upscale clothing from name-brand designers, she stopped at the store seamstress’ office that once was her childhood bedroom. She remembered exactly where her bed, bookcase and dresser fit inside the small room.

She joked that her customers’s ages ranged from “35 to death.” Most are regulars from the region, although one woman comes to the store from Texas every year. The store’s sales team is known for its personal service.

“We would not have the customers we have if we sold them something that didn’t work,” Shuey said.

Susie Johnson has been a saleswoman at Peck’s for the past nine years. She teared up as she talked about the closing.

“It’s not only been the place I’ve worked, it’s been my extended family,” she said.

Longtime customer Peggy Denison has shopped at the dress store for the past 30 years and was there last week for the first day of its going-out-of-business sale.

“You get a personal opinion here that you don’t get in regular stores. And you can’t get Pendleton suits anywhere else. Those never go out of style. I don’t know where I’m going to go from now on,” Denison said. In recent years, she insisted that her daughter and daughter-in-law shop at Peck’s for their career clothes.

Shuey will focus on selling the store after she sells the store’s remaining merchandise in the coming weeks. She intends to play golf and spend time more time with her husband and nine grandchildren.

For now, she is trying to cope with the emotions and physical work involved in closing a business.

“The store was more than a place to buy clothes,” Shuey said.